Re: MD People and Value in the MOQ

From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 18 2004 - 18:05:23 GMT

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    Hello everyone

    >From: "Sam Norton" <elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk>
    >Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
    >To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
    >Subject: Re: MD People and Value in the MOQ
    >Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 12:36:32 -0000
    >
    >Hi Dan,
    >
    >Thanks for the comeback, albeit a little cryptic. You say:
    >
    > > Your question is the same question RMP builds LILA around: Does Lila
    >have
    > > Quality? Do people have value? After some hemming and hawing, RMP
    >decides
    > > Lila doesn't have Quality, Quality has Lila. Is this true?
    >
    >I'm very happy with the idea that Lila doesn't have Quality, Quality has
    >Lila. (This is also behind
    >the 'good is a noun' point, I think.) But I don't see how this cuts across
    >my argument. I am
    >probably being incredibly obtuse about something that other people find
    >obvious, but that doesn't
    >stop me searching for an answer.

    Hi Sam

    I'm happy that you're happy with the idea that Quality has Lila. If we go
    back near the beginning of his book LILA, Robert Pirsig writes: "Their
    overall subject he called a 'Metaphysics of Quality,' or sometimes a
    'Metaphysics of Value,' or sometimes just 'MOQ' to save time." (page 25,
    paperback)

    I take this to mean "value" and "quality" are interconvertible. So people
    don't have value, value has people. I hope perhaps this explains a little
    better how my argument cuts across your argument.

    >
    >Let me expand on that a little. As I understand the phrase 'Quality has
    >Lila', it means that in the
    >mystical flux of Quality, which expresses itself in various Dynamic and
    >Static patterns of value,
    >some patterns have coalesced around a person which we call 'Lila'. But it
    >is the patterns that are
    >primary, not the person. To put it technically, the person is an
    >epiphenomenon without any value in
    >and of itself (contrasted with the patterns of value which 'compose' the
    >person).

    In the MOQ, it is value that is primary, not the patterns. Patterns are
    intellectual constructs.

    >
    >I suspect you'll come back at me on this and say I'm still missing the
    >point, which may well be
    >true, but perhaps I'm just addicted to bashing my head against this
    >particular brick wall.

    I don't mean to insinuate that you're missing any point and I'm sorry if
    that's how I come across. More than likely it is me who is doing the
    missing.

    >
    > > >and it is merely a useful form of language. It is not
    > > >that we generate the value by our description, but that we recognise
    >the
    > > >value which is present, in
    > > >its static and dynamic aspects.
    > >
    > > This is wrong. I urge you to rethink it.
    >
    >Any hints and tips as to how? Otherwise I'm being condemned without appeal.

    I think you should perhaps re-read the section on gravity. It seems to me
    you're saying that there are laws "out there" waiting to be discovered. I
    believe the MOQ disagrees.

    >
    > > > Furthermore, where does it say that 'people are value'? I thought
    > > >Pirsig said a) people are agglomerations of patterns of value; b) those
    > > >patterns can be separately
    > > >described; and c) the value of a 'person' is an illusion. Have I
    >misread
    > > >him?
    > >
    > > Misinterpreted, IMO. The MOQ subscribes to the notion that man is the
    > > MEASURE of all things. It doesn't subscribe to man is the MEASURER of
    >all
    > > things. I'd say that's where our differences begin.
    >
    >Can you expand on this? I wouldn't have split those things apart (ie I had
    >always read the former as
    >equivalent to the latter) so perhaps this is precisely what I need to dig
    >into.

    I read "the measure of all things" as being synonymous with "the value of
    all things" whereas a "measurer" is performing the valuation, set apart from
    all things.

    >
    > > Anyway, I enjoy reading your posts even though I don't always agree with
    > > you.
    >
    >Thanks. We're all in your debt still for Lila's Child if you ask me.

    Thank you for saying so.

    And thank you for your comments,

    Dan

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